Dropbox moves to Ireland for all customers outside of North America

But since Amazon has offices in the USA, the NSA considers all AWS hosted data in whatever country the Amazon operated data center is located in, to be under US jurisdiction.

I had a client who pulled all their (encrypted) data off the Ninefold cloud (Ninefold were at the time a fully Australian owned and hosted company) when they leased data center space and opened an office in CA – due to data sovereignty concerns.

In that order?

Ireland often gets a lot of flak from the US and the EU about being a "tax haven" with similarities drawn to the Isle of Man or the Cayman Islands.

Irelands corporation tax rate is 12.5%, in the US the rate is often cited as 30% and similarly with France and Germany. However the "effective" corporate tax rate is actually lower than Irelands in many cases because there are many write offs and loop holes that mean companies rarely pay 30% and much closer to 8%. These writes offs and loop holes aren't really as available in Ireland and subsequently mean Irelands tax scheme is more transparent in the sense the perceived value is closer to the actual value.

It's just a competitive and transparent tax policy that has been in place since 1960's. A lot of people here and in the media will use this as evidence that Ireland is a tax haven. I'll concede measures like the Double Irish were a step too far -- a 12.5% rate isn't. If Dropbox really wanted to I'm sure they could find plenty of write offs in the UK like Starbucks did. There might be other factors influencing this decision too though e.g. avoiding the UK because a Brexit is on the table. Ireland has a better climate for data centres compared to say the Cayman Islands.

You're exactly right. While we look at this stuff as despicable, because it really is, we can't blame the companies. Except ... we can, right? They're the ones who have manipulated the tax codes, right? They're practically writing the laws, right? Ultimately though, the politicians are the ones who are passing the laws. They're the ones who are being bribed, excuse me, funded, by corporations and the wealthy. To blame corporations for taking every advantage of the system, to manipulate it in whatever way possible, is silly. Capitalism rewards innovation. It rewards plugging the holes that cost money (and taxes can be quite a big hole). These can be great benefits to everyone to some extent, but they also eventually lead to buying out competitors which reduces competition, which can result in big, lazy companies who'd rather legislate than innovate - I'm looking at you, Cable Company and Telephone Company, or the Media conglomerates. That's what we have the world over.

Maybe it's just me, but for me, the problem is our political system - it's not designed to withstand these corrupting forces. Some countries deal with it slightly better, but barely just.

I like competitive capitalism. I like democracy, and even the idea of a representative democracy. But they don't play well together when you have the capitalists ultimately deciding who gets to represent the people, and then those representatives bending in every which way to make things easier for their funders. When you have a system that rewards bribery, or has in its place a revolving door between legislators and business, you're going to have these effects. The solution to this I think is really rather simple, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.

Thanks. We took "data" out of the title. If anyone can suggest a more accurate title, we'll change it again.